I enjoy Simon Cooper’s chalk stream focussed newsletters, for a variety of reasons, not least that they are well written, sardonic and interesting. No matter what he writes – unarguable truth or arrant nonsense – there’s never a dull moment.

On the 6^th June Simon asked “where do all the water company fines go?”. Good question! The Conservative gov’t introduced the idea that these fines ought to go to improving the environment damaged by water company malpractice. But the sums aren’t ring-fenced. So, of the £242-million levied on the industry in 2022/23, only £11-million found its way into the Water Restoration Fund. We need to ask this question repeatedly: “who is trousering the fines?”

This week Simon is on the water company case again, lampooning Southern Water’s Tim McMahon. McMahon had claimed that the south-east of England was “drier than Istanbul”. Simon called this “Southern Water Fantasy Maths”. 

“McMaths,” he wrote “who probably hones his calculating skills watching endless repeats of the numbers game on quiz show Countdown had to perform two feats of contorted logic to arrive at this implausible claim. Firstly, he had to include the population of London in his calculations. The last time I looked our capital was most definitely not in the south-eastern portion of England but hey-ho Tim perhaps you are lining yourself up for a Nobel Prize double to include geography. Secondly, Tim has used the historic average for Istanbul rainfall but compares it to one of the driest periods on record for South-East England.”

In fact Tim had said to the BBC: “If you look at the south-east of England, it’s drier than Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas, Marrakesh. We have got a very densely populated area and we need to start investing to cater for that. We need to reduce customer usage. Otherwise we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for customers and might not be the best thing for our environment.”

If I were to pick that statement apart, it would not be to make a petty objection to the “drier than …” statement.

The point is kind of obviously rhetorical, not literal. Tim is also clearly referring to the geographical reality, not the regional concept. London is undeniably in south-east England. It is a region in itself, however, so it is not technically in the region described as “the South-East”.

To match the pedantry I looked up the “centre of England” and found it – deemed so by Ordnance Survey – to be a village in Leicestershire called Fenny Drayton, definitely above and to the left of London.

As for the rainfall, across the south-east of England it is generally a bit less than 650mm a year. Sydney’s average rainfall is 1150mm, Istanbul’s 820mm, Dallas’ 880mm, and Marrakesh’s average is 250mm.

So, McMahon was wrong about Marrakesh.

To his wider point, however: south-east England is undeniably dry. Why object to someone saying that blindingly obvious truth? 

And I’m glad Tim has pulled London into his justification, because it is around London that our chalk streams are most damaged by abstraction. That’s because there are too many tea-pots, basins, showers, loos, baths and gardens relative to how much rain falls in the Thames basin.

The Misbourne is regularly dry. As are the upper Beane and Darent. Abstraction in the upper Lea is 90% of average recharge. The poor-old Lea doesn’t really become a river until the Luton sewage works discharge. 

That’s why we do need investment, a national grid for water, pipelines, reservoirs and de-salination. The lot.

The part of Tim’s statement that is of concern is the idea that if we don’t trim usage we may have to put other investments in place, which might be bad for customers.

That’s the bit to focus on.

Demand reduction per head of itself solves only one problem: demand increase through development. On it’s own trimming customer usage just allows the government to build more houses.

To see chalk streams flowing naturally again, we need to reduce the amount of water we take out of chalk aquifers. And we can’t do that without investment.